The photo-sharing Instagram introduces a feature that would make replying to Stories a lot more engaging. The hundreds of millions of Story users, are allowed to respond to with photos, videos, and Boomerangs.
Bypassing text entirely, when users are viewing a Story and want to reply using a photo or video, they can tap on the camera icon that appears right beside the text box at the bottom of each story.
After tapping it, an interface that is similar to the one that users normally see when they are adding their Stories, will show up.
In that interface, users can also choose to record a short clip in normal speed, rewind, take a photo with the augmented face overlays, use hashtags or select a picture or video they had previously taken. Once they're done creating the reply, they can simply press send.
Users can also position their reply, just like stickers, resizing it, or just spinning it around.
The replies to a Story will be sent to the recipient's Direct Inbox, as usual. The photos and videos will behave the same way as all disappearing messages do on Instagram. And as usual, senders will see a notification if others take a screenshot or replay their photo or video reply.
Previously, users could only reply to an Instagram Stories using text. The update is opening up a whole new sharing experience. Users can express something, as simple as by taking a selfie, for example.
Following the release of the Stories feature in 2016, Instagram has been repetitively "borrow" popular features from rivals.
The update isn't huge and isn't introducing anything new on its own. But that small improvement could make Instagram a lot more engaging. As Snapchat has shown, people tend to send funny and spontaneous photos back and forth. And Instagram's update is just improvising a feature that Snapchat has pioneered.
While It all originated from Snapchat, Instagram is pulling away by introducing a little thing that could have a much bigger effect.
The company do blatantly mimic competitors, but it's strategy seems to be working well. With more than 250 million users, Instagram surpassed Snapchat.
And with new features being introduced regularly, it doesn't seem that Instagram is going to stop promoting itself to be better than competitors in their own game.